The US proxy war against Russia in Syria is not being fought so much as it is being lostHow will the US respond to its inevitable loss in Syria?

In spite of coming under constant attack from ISIS, Russian military engineers have build a bridge across the Euphrates in Deir ez-Zor, which is capable of handling 8,000 vehicles per day including large trucks and tanks.

While the rapid construction of the strong river bridge is being rightly touted as a remarkable achievement against considerable odds, it also represents an important strategic and even geo-political development in the wider context of the Syrian conflict.

Prior to the battle for Deir ez-Zor, there were whispers that Russia had consigned itself to remain west of the Euphrates in respect of its anti-terrorist battles in Syria. Implicit in this theory was that Syria would not venture east of the Euphrates, which had generally been a US and US proxy dominated area.

Officially, Syria has always maintained that it seeks to liberate “every inch” of its territory and that further more, all uninvited foreign powers and unofficial militias (such as the SDF) are illegal entities which are classed as enemies of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Far from leaving Syria to fight alone east of the Euphrates, Russia is now actively assisting Syrian troops east of the river in Deir ez-Zor. Thus, the building of the bridge increasingly confirms that Russia will stand alongside the Syrian Arab Army and Air Force as it continues to push east and north, liberating legal Syrian territory from terrorist groups and foreign occupiers.

It is no coincidence that the Syrian-Russian push east of the Euphrates has come at a time when there is mounting evidence of tripartite battlefield and intelligence collusion between ISIS, the Kurdish led US proxy militia SDF and US forces.

Nor is it a coincidence that it is becoming increasingly apparent that mutual enemies of both Syria and Russia were responsible for leaking information to ISIS which resulted in the targeted killing of the martyred Russian officer Valery Asapov.

While Russia has never deliberately targeted US proxies apart from jihadist groups, now it seems that all US proxies, including jihadist groups are systematically targeting Syrian and Russian troops. This is all the more apparent when one understands that Raqqa has been partly abandoned by the US and SDF in order to move troops and supplies to Deir ez-Zor.

There is no morally justifiable strategic reason for the US to be doing this. If there was truly something even approaching a mutual understanding about the US and its proxies along with Syria and its allies fighting ISIS in a semi-coordinated fashion, the US could continue to concentrate on Raqqa, where little real progress has been made, while Syria and Russia concentrate on Deir ez-Zor, where considerable progress has been made in spite of attacks from both ISIS and the SDF.

The only strategic reason for the US to move its proxies to Deir ez-Zor at such a time is to compete for territory with Syria and its allies and this is of course what is blatantly happening.

In June of this year, Russia stated that its forces would target any US or allied aircraft west of the Euphrates unless such moves were coordinated with Syria and her genuine partners. What was not said and what legally did not need to be said, is that Syria and her allies have the full right to operate in all parts of Syria, including east of the Euphrates. If the US thought that Russia would some how reject international law and stop Syria from exercising its right to liberate all of its territory, the US was simply being foolish.

Syria has strategically liberated parts of Syria in their order of manifest importance. It was only a matter of time before areas east of the Euphrates and Deir ez-Zor in particular, would be the next terrorist domino for Syria to push over.

Any wishful thinking on the US part that Russia would either abandon or go against Syria in this unfolding struggle, was delusional. In reality, the US may well have been leading Russia on with words of ‘cooperation’ that never amounted to a great deal, knowing that it was in fact inevitable that as soon as Syria reached the Euphrates, Syria’s Russian ally would cross the river with Syrian troops.

In this sense, while things are ever more dangerous in respect of a direct US-Russian confrontation, in the wider sense, it is the US that is losing ground. The US has gone from a policy of hard regime change, to one of soft regime change, to one of a presumed semi-permanent occupation of eastern Syria without regime change in Damascus, to the current position of being outflanked by Syria and Russia, even in eastern Syria.

The next possible move for the US might be to concentrate on northern areas dominated by Kurdish militants and radicals, but the precedent being set in Iraq at this very moment may lead the US to question the wisdom of such a position.

With Iraqi and Turkish troops conducting joint military exercises and with Turkey promising an economic embargo against Kurdish regions of Iraq at best and a full scale military intervention if this does not hold back secessionists, the US may realise that if it thinks it can carve Syria up along Kurdish nationalist lines, that Turkey will not sit idly and watch it happen, not least because Turkey’s relationship with Syrian Kurds is even worse than its relations with Iraqi Kurds which at one time was surprisingly good. In this sense, if the US goes full-throttle for Syrian Kurdish separatism, the US would retain her current opponents in Syria while gaining many angry new ones, including and especially NATO member Turkey.

Just as the 1951 Chinese Spring Offensive during the Korean War, pushed US allied troops back below the 38th parallel, the current Syria-Russian offensive in Deir ez-Zor could begin to squeeze the US out of much of eastern Syria and back to the Iraqi border.

With 85% of Syria already back under government control, a strategic and symbolic victory for Syria is already in the making. The question is, how much are the US and her proxy forces willing to fight back and expend further blood in this process?

The bigger question therefore no longer reads, “Is the US at war with Russia in Syria”? The question now is, “How will the US respond to its inevitable loss”?

Defense ministers of 41-nation Islamic Military Alliance to meet in Riyadh next week
GHAZANFAR ALI KHAN | Published — Sunday 19 November 2017

RIYADH: The defense ministers of the 41-nation Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) will meet in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Nov. 26. With around one-third of the Arab world currently embroiled in conflict caused mainly by terror groups, the meeting is a significant step in the countries’ cooperation to fight the menace of terrorism in the Islamic world.

“The meeting of the defense ministers aims to strengthen cooperation and integration between the Islamic Military Alliance members,” said a report published by Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on Saturday. The meeting will also be attended by ambassadors and senior diplomats representing their countries in Saudi Arabia, alongside top Saudi and IMAFT officials, said the SPA report.

The meeting will discuss a host of subjects including ways to establish the IMAFT as a major bloc to address security challenges and terrorism issues. The defense ministers will formally discuss plans and proposals to unify the efforts of the Islamic alliance and promote coordination with other international agencies. At least two embassies of the IMAFT member states confirmed the meeting will take on Saturday, but refused to share more details.

The SPA report said that the meeting would mark the “real beginning” of the military alliance. A declaration issued by the Arab-US-Islamic Summit in Riyadh in May this year announced that the alliance member-states were ready to deploy 34,000 troops with a view to supporting operations against terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. The IMAFT was launched by Saudi Arabia in late 2015 with a view to fighting terrorism.

CAIRO – The Arab League strongly condemned the targeting of Riyadh by an Iranian-made ballistic missile from Yemeni territories by Houthi-Saleh militias.

It considered this a blatant aggression against Saudi Arabia and a threat to Arab security.

This came in the communique following an emergency meeting on Sunday of Arab League foreign ministers called to discuss the Iranian threats to the countries of the region.

The communique confirmed the Kingdom’s right to defend its territories as stipulated by Article 51 of UN Charter. It expressed support for the measures decided to be taken against Iranian violations within the context of international legitimacy.

It condemned all terrorist acts being carried by Iran in Bahrain. The Arab League supported all Bahraini measures and steps to combat terror and terrorist groups and protect its security and stability.

Condemned Iranian policy in continuously meddling in the Arab affairs and feeding sectarian strife and conflicts, the communique said that Iran should refrain from supporting such groups and inciting conflicts, especially in Yemen.

The communique blamed the terrorist Hezbollah organization, a partner in the Lebanese government, as responsible for supporting terrorism and terrorist groups in Arab countries with sophisticated weapons and ballistic missiles.

BEIRUT: A commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and a lower-ranking Iranian fighter have been killed fighting Daesh in Syria in recent days, Iranian media reported on Sunday.

The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful military force that also oversees an economic empire worth billions of dollars, have been fighting in support of Syrian president Bashar Assad for several years.

An Iranian official told the Tasnim news agency last year that more than 1,000 Iranians have been killed in Syria. Senior members of the Guards have been among those killed.

Kheyrollah Samadi, a Guards commander in charge of a unit in Syria, died on Thursday in fighting in the Albu Kamal region, bordering Iraq, according to Fars News.

Samadi was killed in clashes with Daesh, according to the Ghatreh news site. Iranian media have previously reported on fighting in that area between Iran’s Shiite militia allies and Daesh.

The Syrian army and its allies took complete control over Albu Kamal, Daesh’s last significant town in Syria, a military news service run by Hezbollah said on Sunday.

Samadi, who fought in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s and had retired from the Iranian military before signing on to go to Syria, was killed by a mortar explosion, Fars News, a news agency, said.

Iranian news sites posted pictures on Sunday of Samadi with Qassem Soleimani, head of the Guards branch responsible for operations outside Iran.

The lower-ranking Iranian fighter, Mehdi Movahednia, was killed on Saturday in clashes with Daesh in the town of Mayadin in eastern Syria, Fars News reported.

The Revolutionary Guards initially kept quiet about their role in the Syria conflict. But in recent years, as casualties have mounted, they have been more outspoken about their engagement, framing it as an existential struggle against the Sunni Muslim fighters of Daesh who see Shiites, the majority of Iran’s population, as apostates.

On web sites linked to the Guards, members of the organization killed in Syria and Iraq are praised as protectors of Shiite holy sites and labeled “defenders of the shrine”.

US President Donald Trump last month gave the US Treasury Department authority to impose economic sanctions on members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in response to what Washington calls its efforts to destabilize and undermine its opponents in the Middle East.

The Turkish military continues to dispatch troops to Syria’s Idlib province to establish observation posts to monitor the cease-fire as part of the Astana Peace process.

During the recent peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana, the three guarantor countries, Turkey, Iran and Russia, agreed to establish de-escalation zones in Idlib and in parts of the Aleppo, Latakia and Hama provinces.

A military convoy arrived late Saturday to a new observation area in the western rural side of Haleppo, which lies within the Idlib de-escalation zone.

The convoy was deployed to an observation point after it proceeded along the Idlib-Afrin zone.

The Turkish Armed Force elements are also being deployed in Afrin, a Haleppo district near Turkey-Syria border, which is under siege by the PKK/PYD terrorist organization.

The dispatches will continue along the border of Idlib-Afrin under the rules of engagement agreed to in May among the guarantor countries.

On Oct. 12, the Turkish military started to cross into the region to establish observation points to monitor the cease-fire regime in the Idlib de-escalation zone.

Idlib, which is located in northwestern Syria on the Turkish border, faced intense attacks by the Assad regime after a vicious civil war broke out in 2011.

Since, March 2015, Idlib was no longer under the control of the Assad regime and was dominated by military opposition groups and anti-regime armed organizations.

The Syrian army and loyalist militiamen on Nov. 19 retook full control of Albu Kamal from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a military source said, ousting the jihadists from their last urban stronghold in Syria.

Albu Kamal has changed hands several times, with government forces announcing the capture of the town near the Iraqi border earlier this month but losing it to a blistering ISIL counter-attack a week ago.

“ISIL put up fierce resistance and tried to use explosives and suicide bombers, but besieging the city allowed the army to clinch the offensive and take full control of the city,” the source added.

A string of territorial defeats across northern and eastern Syria had left Albu Kamal as the last significant Syrian town held by ISIL.

Syria’s army announced on Nov. 9 it had ousted ISIL from the town, but the jihadists launched a lightning offensive and retook it.

A total of 1,000 tonnes of rice donated by China has been delivered to Syria's northwestern city of Latakia, the Chinese Embassy in Damascus said. The donation was part of a larger supplies aid to be delivered to the war-torn country in batches in the near future, Xinhua news agency reported.

The statement issued on Monday by the Chinese Embassy in Damascus said the 1,000 tonnes of rice is part of 5,404 tonnes of rice China is pledging to deliver in the near future. "China is working hand in hand with the Syrian side to secure the rice to be delivered to the Syrian people as soon as possible."

A delegation from the Chinese Embassy in Damascus on Monday visited the port of the coastal city of Latakia in northwestern Syria, where the first shipment arrived.

Latakia Governor Ibrahim Khudr Salem escorted the delegation to the port of Latakia, expressing gratitude for the Chinese food aid. "Thanks for the aid donated by China and for the supportive stance of the Chinese government and people to the Syrian people in their confrontation of terrorism and the regional schemes to divide Syria," Khudr said.

Chinese Ambassador to Syria, Qi Qianjin, said that Beijing aimed to help the Syrian people in the difficult time the country is passing through. "We would like, through this food aid, to help the Syrian people in the difficult time of war and this food aid is a clear sign of the firm relations and friendship between the governments and peoples of China and Syria and we will continue to offer all humanitarian and economic help to the Syrian people."

China has been supporting Syria in the humanitarian field since 2011.

In May, China declared that it would provide food aid to the developing countries, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by China in 2013 with the aim of building a trade, investment and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes. Apart from the cooperation with the humanitarian organisations, China has also made direct donations in Syria. — IANS.

According to information gathered by Anadolu Agency from a reliable source in Syria’s Haseke province, the U.S. army delivered the combat and mine resistant vehicles via the Semalka border crossing at the Iraq-Syria border.

The terrorist organization plans to dispatch the vehicles and hundreds of militants to Afrin district in Aleppo province near the Turkish border, the source added.

The PKK needs to use the Aleppo corridor controlled by the Bashar al-Assad regime and Iran-backed groups for delivering the vehicles.

The PYD and its military wing YPG are Syrian branches of the PKK, which has waged a war against Turkey for more than 30 years.

Since the PKK launched its terror campaign in Turkey in 1984, tens of thousands of people have been killed, including more than 1,200 since July 2015 alone.

The U.S. and the coalition have largely ignored the PYD/PYG links to the PKK, which the U.S., EU and Turkey list as a terrorist group.

Turkey cites the PYD’s deep ties with the terrorist PKK -- a group responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Turkey -- in opposing U.S. cooperation with the PKK/PYD. The U.S. sees the PKK as terrorist but its Syrian PYD offshoot as a “reliable partner” against Daesh.

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A Russian soldier riding in a helicopter en route to Deir Ezzor on September 15, 2017. (AFP)

“Of course, there will be a decision taken by the commander in chief and the group (working in Syria) will be decreased,” said Valery Gerasimov

He said some military will be left behind even after Moscow scales back its involvement in bombing and combat. “We will leave the Center for Reconciliation, our two military bases (in Tartus and Hmeimim) and several necessary structures to maintain the state which has developed at this time,” said Gerasimov.